


he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me as of a dream)

by amerande



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley has whatever genital configuration you want to imagine (Good Omens), Crowley is a woman (Good Omens), Crowley is a woman for three reasons, Emotional Crowley (Good Omens), First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Fluff without Plot, Food, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Genderqueer Crowley (Good Omens), Historical, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Inspired by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi's Poetry, Inspired by Khalil Gibran’s Poetry, Inspired by Walt Whitman’s Poetry, M/M, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Not Omniscient But Sufficiently Nosy, PWP without Porn, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Bottom Crowley (Good Omens), Present Tense, Pseudo historical if I’m being honest, Self-Indulgent, Service Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), Wildly Self-Indulgent, endless pit of need power bottom Crowley (Good Omens), honestly does this count as porn???? Probably not, listen any configuration would have felt right, no beta we die like idiots, reason the first: gender fluid/queer Crowley is Very Important to me, reason the second: Golgotha Crowley makes my heart sing and I want more of her at all times, reason the third: this was so much easier to write on account of them not sharing pronouns, so you can just kind of paint that picture yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 02:29:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21171941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amerande/pseuds/amerande
Summary: When the world is a little less than three thousand years old, Aziraphale and Crowley meet at a wedding.





	he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me as of a dream)

It's the third night of the wedding when Aziraphale sees her. It is the third night of the wedding, and the music, the wine, and the promise of love and joining and the intertwining of lives have woven a spell that has enchanted all of the guests, himself not least. In the reed-pipe and the voices of many people singing together is an easy bliss every bit as intoxicating as the garnet wine that seems to never run out. The celebration pulls him along in its current; he floats at ease. 

He is sitting in the courtyard when he sees her: she stands in the open doorway, a silhouette against the golden light inside, and she's wreathed in the fire of her hair, a bloodred crown of glory arrayed around her like a veil. The stars are shining in the sky and in his eyes as he calls to her. She comes to him like the sun setting each night: beautiful, inexorable, and burning. Even at this distance, even in the darkness, just the fact of her gaze scorches him like no fire ever could. She walks like fire spreading in the treetops, like the heart of the impulse which drives the joyous to dance.

When she greets him, her voice is as dark and sweet and deep as it has always been. It is a music finer than all the bright sounds of the wedding. She gives him the name she uses in this time, _ Asteret_. Never before has she worn a new name. This one floats through the air like smoke and it sparks against his ears and on his tongue when he tries it. Her eyes are wide and solemn when he says it, but she nods with satisfaction. 

They talk, and she brings him wine, and he places dates, raisins, and apricots on a plate for her. He laughs when she shares half of each with him. They are sweeter, coming from her hand—sweeter still is the brush of her fingers against his lips. He shares wine from his own cup; her lips meet it like a kiss and she drinks deeply. As he watches her, the glint of her golden eyes, the flash of her teeth when she talks, the dance of light on the angles of her strong face, he feels sated beyond any need for food or drink. There is something like a hunger, but it is instead a fullness which might overwhelm him if he lets it. 

The night flows like honey, languid and easy. At times they are silent, letting unspoken words that they might deny but can never take back unspool between them until the air is full and shining with them. She plucks jasmine buds and tamarix branchlets from the plants in the courtyard and tucks them into his hair above his temples. Every touch of her fingertips and scrape of her nails against his scalp is like a kiss and a promise, and he sits, he lets her continue, he feels bereft when she is finished. 

It is unwise, he knows. This is unwise, but he leans in and whispers a joke, just for her, just to hear the bronze bell of her laugh. She smells like woodfire and myrrh and it is all he can do to pull away once he has been so close. 

They are nearly alone in the courtyard, and he has fallen entirely under the spell of the night. It is his choice to be entranced, to notice and cherish every beautiful thing about her (and everything about her is beautiful). His choice, too, to tell her he finds her so pleasing, also whispered into the shell of her ear, and a rose-pink flush creeps up her cheeks, and he tells her that this is loveliest of all. 

She has adorned him with a wreath of flowers, and he heaps praises upon her like a crown. Like all the gifts they have given each other through the centuries, these are fleeting, tiny, and more precious than any gold or jewel. 

When all but the most exuberant of guests have fallen asleep, she rises. _ I am leaving, _she says, and she makes an invitation of it. It is an invitation she has made before, and will make again, in a hundred ways great and small. An offer to draw closer. Arms open, waiting merely for him to step in and accept their embrace. 

His blessing here, the reason he is at the wedding to begin with, has been given, and the only guest who would miss his company has just told him she is leaving; he suddenly feels as if the night may freeze him without the fire of her. So although it is foolish, he stands and follows as she leads him out to the desert night. 

Music attends them because it seems fitting to them both that it should. When the lights of homes are dim on the horizon, they are surrounded still by the song of silver harp-strings. Her feet do not keep time to the music; instead she steps through it and around it, her very body a counterpoint. 

She dances for him, and all the stars are caught up in the curls of her hair, spun wide as she turns and moves. Even in their soft light, the flow of her dress over the planes of her chest and the sword-sharp angles of her hips is enough to make his heart and mind race. 

Like a spring wind, she flits about him, both enticing and tormenting. Aziraphale turns and turns to keep her in his sight until the dark world around them is spinning and he must be still. She settles, then. She alights near him like a bee on petals, and as close. 

There is another invitation, now, in how very near to him she is. He allows himself to be lifted up by the gentle wonder in her eyes. No trace of guile is in her, only a tremulous hope that raises him to the greatest heights he has ever known. 

At the pinnacle, before he begins the descent which he feels will surely turn into a headlong fall, he pauses. He has chosen to be here, to come under her spell, and they are as far as can be from the light of day. There will be no stopping his heart, he knows, if they begin. So long as she is willing, he will continue—like a trickle of water through the restraining wall, if he allows himself this, he will surely be unable to resist the rest. 

So be it. 

He kisses her, tilting his head up to meet her lips. Like the gentlest rainfall on dry plains, her kisses bring the flood, and he is swept along in the sensation of it, in the taste of her skin and the heat of her hard body pressed up against his. 

His eyes close, but it is as if he sees her still, like he is always seeing her for she is always with him even when they are half the world apart. His eyes close and open again, and he wishes for a moment that he were in his true form, so he could see her with all of his eyes and behold her all the better for it. 

But he is in this body, as she is in hers, and he rejoices for that and for the delight they share now. He pours this joy into her with a kiss, and she shares her own until he is breathless, they are both breathless, they who do not need breath—but if they did not breathe, he could not relish the sweet silk of her breath over his cheek when their lips part. If they did not breathe, he could not whisper to her how perfect this moment is, for to _ whisper _ would have no meaning. 

And the stars are watching them. They shine down as he lifts the hem of her dress with reverent fingers. They gather in her hair and her eyes as she unties his belt, as she draws a gossamer veil from the air and lays it on the ground for them to rest on. The stars glint off of their skin as they lay, and as they twine so close that neither can find where one becomes the other. 

He pursues the secrets of her body with eager hands: each sigh, each entreaty, each reflexive tightening of her hands on him stirs him to greater effort, and then mere touch is not enough and he must taste all of her. Slow kisses trail down her chin, to the apple of her throat. After lingering at the side of her neck, which makes her breathing shallow and fast, he licks the hollow of her collar, then moves with kisses down the smoothness of her chest until he is at her waist, then at her marvelous hips. He looks up, with his hands running over her hips and thighs, and he asks her for permission, and she hisses out a soft _ yes _that has been building in her for millennia. 

He kisses her again, between her legs, as slow and gentle as he dares. His heart, his very being, is full with thoughts and feelings he cannot well name, and so he prays that she can hear them in his tender devotions. They are under the night sky, but in a way they are also in a garden, in the first garden, and he is finally, _ finally_, submitting to that which became inevitable at their first meeting, for she had placed her seal upon him then as surely as any covenant. There is a fulfillment in this, a completion and completeness that comes of doing that which is both _ good _ and _ pleasurable_, that which he both is meant to do and wishes to do—to caress her, to bring her every enjoyment he can, to hold her close as she writhes against him until she shouts, and grows suddenly, delightfully still, except for her hands clutching at him. 

She pulls him back up and he goes willingly, until they are kissing again, lip to lip, and he can look once again into her golden eyes and whisper in her ear how very, how perfectly, how utterly lovely she is, and how loved. 

It is soon, after all this time it feels _ too _ soon, but he had known that once he began this he could not well help himself. So he says it, _ love_, and looks into her eyes as he repeats it and wills her to believe him. She clings to him, as if she would disappear into him if she could, and he holds her and whispers more to her like she is the endless tide and he is the eternal shore. 

Soon she begs for more and then he is in her, and they move together like all the stars wheeling through the sky. Giving pleasure and sharing pleasure with her, receiving it from her, is an ecstasy that flays him like a whip until all at once he is coming, gasping, spilling himself into her and pressing sweaty kisses to her sharp cheeks, her temples, her eyelids. 

There is nothing finished with this ending, for he delights still in touching her and being touched by her, and they find no reason to stop, so that when dawn cracks the horizon, they are at once shy novices still and old, familiar lovers. Her body is as known to him as his own has ever been; his body is a new creation to him, remade by her hands. 

They ask no questions of each other in the morning light; they make no promises. There are barely words at all between them, because the whispers which shine bright at night feel feeble under the sun. Instead, she gives one last kiss to his lips and brings his hand gently to her cheek. He holds her for a moment, brushes his knuckles down her jaw, and then turns away before he can sink back into her endless ocean. 

When he leaves, he is alone and not alone. She does not walk beside him, but she is with him all the same, as he knows she will be even when her scent and her voice and her touch have faded. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I love comments and would love to chat with you in them. You can find me on tumblr as [thelasthomelyurl](https://thelasthomelyurl.tumblr.com/).
> 
> The title is from Walt Whitman’s _To A Stranger_, which I have loved for a long time and which I think is very good for these two.
> 
> There was a lot of poetry from Rumi and Kahlil Gibran and Nizar Qabbani that I read in research/inspiration/mood-setting for this, but I want to quote specifically this excerpt from _On Beauty_ (although _On Pleasure_ is as fitting and as heavily referenced in this one shot):  
All these things have you said of beauty,  
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,  
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.  
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,  
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.  
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,  
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes  
and a song you hear though you shut your ears.  
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark,  
nor a wing attached to a claw,  
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and  
a flock of angels for ever in flight.


End file.
